"I went up to Apple, spent the day there, talking with Jony and kind of picking his brain about product and things like that, what makes them who they are. I mean why? I'm very very curious about that and understanding that, and I think once you have the thing that you're passionate about and you can look at other people and other entities or other things or works of art, you can draw things from that to help you be better at what you do by looking for those common denominators.

"Jony wanted to know 'how do I prepare? How do I study? How do I view the game? How do you build your game?' My response is much like the way he builds products. You think sequentially. Yeah, you look at the end result of what you want to create, but in order to create that there are so many other little things that go into this massive entity or device.

"This is no different than building a basketball game. You start with what do you want your game to be? What would make your game most unstoppable or hard to deal with? And now you work backwards from there and you start building it one piece at a time, one move at a time, one count at a time. There's a lot of similarities there."

The advantage of being part of a five-time NBA championship team, NBA MVP winner, and a generally recognizable household name is that Kobe Bryant can get those sort of "pick each others' brains" meetings with guys like Jony Ive if he wants them. But if you could get a meeting with Sir Jony Ive, what would you ask him?